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Co-founded the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, Suchitra is also the founder of the Polis Project, a research and journalism organisation. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Although Vijayan critiques the state and its complicity in violence and erasure of lives, she refrains from villainizing the men who serve the state. And, in many cases, they are children of the literary, cultural, or political elite who have long been the beneficiaries of the Indian state. @suchitrav. So now, how do we respond to this? What changeshave youobserved in the way you treat your subject after finishing your journey and book? At the end of it, I felt that I learnt more about myself, more about my home, I had becomeif not a better writer, an infinitely better human being, which is to say that one realises that theres always a Longue dure that one needs to consider, crave out time and space to think, train oneself not to always react. Even as 70% of the border with Bangladesh has been fenced, "smugglers, drug couriers, human traffickers and cattle rustlers continue to cross to ply their. Rumpus: The book derives its emotional strength and narrative energy from the stories of people you encounter at the borders. This is a serious, often funny and deeply revealing book. M, An essential, beautifully written report from the hellish margins of a modern mega-state struggling to be a nation, of people whose lives continue to be shaped by violent political marches across age-old homes and habitats. And our language helps us imagine a vision that is truly just, beautiful and ethical. There are instances when you and some voices in the narrative question their documentation practice. An unprecedented militarisation of these spaces accompanied this. They are arriving from various cities and people I have never met. I wrote a book along with it comes love, scorn, and sometimes even ridicule. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. I find that profoundly inspiring. In this podcast, Vijayan discusses with host Alex Woodson her 9,000-mile journey through India's borderlands, which formed the basis of the book, and she discusses the violent and continuing history of the 1947 partition, the stark differences and similarities along South Asia's various borders, and what "citizenship" mean in India in 2021 and Your prose is hopeful there. J.G.P. Global Ethics Review: Midnight's Borders, with Suchitra Vijayan In season two, a quick flashback resolves the plotline from the previous season. She was part of a music band at PSG. At worst, its navel gazing peppered with white guilt, but always politically vacuous. I dont want to make this about me. Suchitra Vijayan is a writer, photographer, lawyer, political essayist, and a lecturer. What do these events have in common? Sharing borders with six countries and spanning a geography that extends from Pakistan to Myanmar, India is the worlds largest democracy and second most populous country. Its a dangerous moment where the figure of the rights-bearing citizen is being reduced to a consuming subject. How "The Family Man" champions the carceral security state. Suchitra Vijayan is an American writer, essayist, activist, and photographer working across oral history, state violence, and visual storytelling. On the C-SPAN Networks: Suchitra Vijayan is a Founder and Executive Director for the Project Polis, The with one video in the C-SPAN Video Library; the first appearance was a . It is also the site of the worlds biggest crisis of statelessness, as it strips citizenship from hundreds of thousands of its peopleespecially those living in disputed border regions. Vasundhara Sirnate Drennan is director of research at the Polis Project. They cannot be abusive or personal. So here, 'Midnight' functions as a moment of violent birth, but also perhaps the foundational violence that becomes codified in various ways, especially in the bodies of people farthest away from power. Also read: The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif. She is the founder and executive director of The Polis Project, and the author of Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India, recently published by Context, Westland. Is secularism a good thing? This is such an insidious conversation to have; this was even before Adani bought it. As the author notes, here, beauty and violence coexist, but never as a binary. A. Midnights Borders is fascinating, eloquent in its insights, and unflinching in its depiction of the dark side of nation-building. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). ""The historical unity of the ruling classes is realized in the state." Antonio Gramsci" Such writings have long been implicated in the history of colonial ethnographic practices, where native informants are poised to become the voices of the empire. Also read: Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar. The result is a gripping, urgent dispatch from a modern India in crisis, and the full and vivid portrait of the country weve long been missing. When Vijayan meets him, he is inside his home with all the windows closed and sealed to snuff out light. The pandemic showed us that crises and recurrent disasters that annihilate our lives are here to stay. by Suchitra Vijayan Hardcover 1,759.00 2,023.00 You Save: 264.00 (13%) Usually dispatched in 1 to 3 weeks. Vijayan undertakes a seven-year long, 9,000-mile . The two officers who avert the attack narrowly escape death but are left with broken bodies and broken lives. Some of the oldest resistances in our nation are those communities who have been fighting for their own homes from militarisation who seek to exploit their mineral rich home land for mining. Are you expecting any pushback at all? Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. There are also those who have previously been tacit, if not active, supporters of the right-wing Hindu nationalist Indian state. A Seven Year, 9,000-Mile Journey Along India's Contested Land Borders We need more such books. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. Suchitra Vijayan undertook a 9000 mile journey over seven years to India's borderlands to write Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. More importantly, as Babasaheb would argue, the political revolution was never accompanied by a social revolution. Often, we settle comfortably into describing things as communal riots instead of saying that it was a state-abetted violence, a pogrom, or a brutal massacre. 1 author picked Midnight's Borders as one of their favorite books, . In an early chapter of the book, you talk about how new worlds are created by the people at Indias borders. Midnights Borders perhaps also critiques the widely read body of work available as Indian English Writing (IWE), a literary canon that has so far told the story of India but seldom demonstrated social responsibility by acknowledging the atrocities India has committed silently within its borders. British India was partitioned into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan on the eve of independence in August, 1947. Time to let the diplomats do the hard talk. Like most women, I learnt to navigate this toxic misogyny, the threat of sexual violence, and patriarchy by merely existing as a dark-skinned woman in this country. Many of the stories didnt make it to the book because it became dangerous to identify people. It took me 8 years to write the book. Always. A: This is a very loaded question. The pair experience similar situations in their lives: abuse, the death or absence of a husband, and the longing for a better future. We are consuming subjects in a surveillance economy, not citizens. . We removed an image just before the printing to make sure the person was protected. When I left him (the first time), I had a one-year-old daughter. These instances are also about border practices because modern states, especially liberal democracies, expend immense energy in creating and maintaining identity categories: who belongs, and where. The writing grew around the images and the visual memory of the encounters. Suchitra Vijayan: The Indian state has always used excessive and extrajudicial violence on communities that resist, whether its the borderlands, peripheries, or mainland Now the international viewfor instance while the Gujarat riots of 2002 brought critical international media attention and criticism, and [current Prime Minister] Modi was banned from entering the US, India was able to effectively manage global public opinion. Abrogation Of Article 370 Jammu And Kashmir Statehood, BSF foils another Pakistan plot, shoots down drone in Punjab's Amritsar, Light on weight, heavy on damage: India will be able to hit deep inside Pakistan with THIS ultralightweight howitzer, Put issues related to border in 'proper place', work for its early normalisation: Chinese FM Qin to Jaishankar, In Midnight's Borders, Suchitra Vijayan meditates on belongingness, freedom and political implications of territorial demarcations. I have no formal training as a writer or a photographer, I taught myself and learnt by doing, failing and creating my own grammar. Perhaps that offers some protection? A memorable, humane museum of forgotten stories that we must all read and remember. M, What experiences and lives unfold in these pages. I left a few names out in the acknowledgment, worrying if it might direct more trouble towards them. O. But Pakistan responded by rejecting these claims and told the Associated Press that the area was mostly deserted wooded area and that there were no casualties or damage on the ground. What are those ethical, moral, and political lines? These new worlds are already herethey are maps of survival, maps of resistance. During the initial search, the BSF troops recovered a black coloured drone - DJI Matrice (made in China), in partially damaged condition, lying near Dhussi Bundh near Shahjada village. One of the reasons why this book was written was to step back: to say that this violence that you and I listen to and encounter is not new to say that this violence is not new. Sometimes lost. Were there times when you doubted your own ability to record and document these people's stories? We play an ever more important role in these times when there is a fascist authoritarian regime in India and a deeply racist police state in the US. So we might never know the true extent of this loss. We thank her for her time, patience, and illuminating insights into her work. [4] She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.[5]. Vijayans lens not only captures the people but also the past through objects, such as the picture of Kotwali Gate, the remains of a medieval fort that serves as a border checkpoint rife with weeds and trees growing on it, symbolic of a state bent on rewriting history rather than preserving it. Born and raised in Madras, India, she is the author of the critically acclaimed book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Melville House, New York). The events in Hathras did not happen at the border; neither did the murder and gang rape of two teenage girls in the Katra village of Budaun district, Uttar Pradesh. She is currently working on her first novel. Love, passion, anger, the desire to make a point about something. If you think about communities in resistance to immense violations, theyre all interconnected to climate justice. This is the backdrop against which we map how border practices and policies have played out in India. Your email address will not be published. And that violence is often abetted by the state and goes unpunished. Vijayan: Let me start heregood writing is powerful and political. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. And were there any apprehensions since you began working on this book? Midnight's Borders by Suchitra Vijayan. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Suchitra - Wikipedia Born and raised in Madras, India, she is the author of the critically acclaimed book Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India (Melville House, New York). Ten years later, you were in Kashmir, where you 'hoped to find answers' by talking to a family that had lost a son. We need to think about border practices, policing, and national security policies within the larger historical and political contexts. Some people later chose not to be included because they feared repercussions, especially as the NRC process started playing out. This language drums the idea of the fundamental importance of justice, and such language is inalienable: it can easily be defined and empathetically understood. I want to flag two essays where I engage with this in an in-depth manner, Disaster Ruins Everything, on my work in Haiti, and what it means to photograph disaster, especially when it is Brown and Black bodies. Empathy is taught by our communities; we are brought up with it. Midnight's Borders: A People's History of Modern India: Vijayan Accompanied by this globally, democracies are becoming more authoritarian and stripping people of their citizenshipreducing them to subjects, entrenching the fault lines of inequality. They all have very specific and carefully curated origin/immigrant stories that cleverly exploit the model minority trope. Is that a probable solution? Theyre screaming all the time, its just that we dont listen to them. Rumpus: I believe your book contributes to an important conversation about India we must have right now in the United States, for its own sake. I think these are fundamental questions of freedom and dignity. Then my agent said, Suchitra, you know, I think youre hiding behind your academic language. So the first reflection is this idea of where we are right now: as people, as a society, as a community. Check posts or bunkers were not part of the landscapes of my home. L.L.B., Law, The University of Leeds, 2004 M.A., International Relation . Suchitra Vijayanis a barrister-at-law, writer and researcher. I believe it can teach us to ask these questions again. Indias intellectual, journalistic, and literary landscape is profoundly problematic and alienating. Its not sustainable, it fractures who we are, chips away and erodes what it fundamentally means to be human. It was not going to be easy as she quickly found out. There are some notable exceptions, but they are an exception. She studied Law, Political Science and International Relations, and was trained as a Barrister-at-Law and called to Bar at the Honourable Society of Inner Temple. In Midnight's Borders, barrister, political analyst, and writer Suchitra Vijayan documentsmany such telling accounts of lives both growing and barely getting by alongIndian borderlands. Growing up I was surrounded by people who emphasised the community over anything else. When the book finally came out, India was undergoing the deadly 2nd wave. Suchitra Vijayan's Midnight's Borders | Youth Ki Awaaz A: This geopolitical violence is not new, theres a long bloody, brutal history to thisa cyclical, ongoing and never-ending history. I particularly loved the fact that all our couple shots were very natural and came out truly . The border runs through him, his friend Jamshed had told Vijayan, He is almost gone, but I dont want his story to be gone too.. Not mine. The nation-state and its ruling class view borders as very different from the people who inhabit these liminal spaces or communities that have been affected by border making and policing practices. Early on, the idea of bearing witness as a rhetorical tool and as a literary device became deeply problematic. In 1971, East Pakistan seceded and became Bangladesh. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. Beyond the confusion over the death tolls at Balakot, news organizations variously reported that between 25 and 350 kilograms of the explosive RDX was used in the attack, when no such information was officially released. The show deals with interesting international happenings. The Rumpus is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Examining My Caste And Its History Is Eye-Opening: A Personal Essay On Casteism And Ancestry, The History Of The Colonial State And The Unmaking Of The Tawaif, Book Review: Looking Through Dalit Sahitya And Ambedkar, These Are The 15 Women Who Helped Draft The Indian Constitution, Gender Roles And Stereotyping In To Kill A Mockingbird, A Brief Summary Of The Second Wave Of Feminism, A Brief Summary Of The First Wave Of Feminism, Kamala Das The Mother Of Modern Indian English Poetry | #IndianWomenInHistory, A Brief Summary Of The Third Wave Of Feminism, The Life And Times Of Dnyanjyoti Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule | #IndianWomenInHistory, FII Interviews: Charlotte Munch Bengtsen Talks About Women In Filmmaking, FII Interviews: Drag King And Influencer Mx. Vijayan: Most Indian American writers, especially many of them who occupy the broad spectrum of literary to punditry, come from immense privilege of caste and class. [2] She became known as Rj Suchi, with her popular morning show Hello Chennai. Rumpus: Were you trying to write a hybrid-genre book? I came with my privileges, also lets not forget prejudices. Hope Is the Last Bastion: Talking with Suchitra Vijayan Take a look at theseevents: The vast infrastructure of detention centers being built in Assam and outside; a politician from a ruling party incites violence by saying, goli maaro saalon ko, and remains free; a minister, a Harvard educated technocrat, garlands and celebrates men for the grave crime of lynching; Dr Teltumbde and other BK 16 [the 16 arrests made in the Bhima Koregaon case] political prisoners remain incarcerated with little, no or manufactured evidence for being dissenting subjects; and a standup comic is arrested for the crime of existing as a Muslim. Also, a book is an act of community; it has many midwives.
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